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This poor thing has certainly seen better days. In keeping with most guitars I currently own, this Johnson was reasonably cheap to buy and played fairly well for over a decade considering the environments in which it was kept and played.

It all came to a weird end when an about-to-be ex-girlfriend used it on me as a club (a long and entertaining story best told over glass of whiskey).

Got the initial repairs done for free by a guy who is more of a framing houses kinda guy than he is a luthier. The repair, while structurally sound, left me somewhat dumbfounded. I mean, sure it was no longer in 2 pieces...but great googily moogily, is that HOT GLUE? (Why yes, as a matter of fact, that is hot glue).

If I had paid someone to do this, I would be posting from a penitentiary somewhere. Unfortunately, I didn't have the sort of cash needed to make a proper repair back then and I still don't have the sort of cash to pay a professional to do what needs doing after all this, so I'm tackling the repair on my own in my spare time.


Here's what I'm dealing with so far:







Current plan is to somehow undo all the glue, bore out the screws and bring everything back together without leaving too many scars.

Can't see the pictures. One of my favorite guitars is a 1932 Dobro that had been spray painted black. When I got it the cone and cover plate was crushed, binding coming off in strips and otherwise a pretty bad mess. I didn't know if I could fix it but I gave two hundred dollars to the lady who owned it. She said her father had bought it when she was a child.

When it was done I took it back and played it for her - I didn't play very well but she wept.



Lets fix yours.

Must have moved the pics in my photobucket.

Started with this:

pics of last night's progress:

Hardware removed, but the cone is glued down with what looks and acts just like elmer's white glue.


Hot glue removed, cone heated up and pried off of the sound hole, more glue lines joining the party at the neck, ridiculous amounts of aftermarket glue repairs, and does that sticker denote QC inspector #5, or serial number 5 on a Johnson?

Can't tell from your pics but most resonators have a neck stick rather than a conventional dovetail or bolted joint. I'm guessing yours doesn't - there would be a little shim block on the back of the guitar that the neck bolts to. They also have one or more screws thru the fretboard extension which holds it down to the top - they are normally hidden my the fretboard markers (feel around under the top and see if there is a bolt or two).

Good luck

I hope to have a little free time this weekend to mess with this one. I'll poke around and see if that's the case.

The outer ring that looks like a crack is just dust & grime that settled under the lip of the hot glue.




As it sits currently.

Pulled the tuning pegs (tuning machines?) right after work today. Then I got around to uncovering the soundholes.

Hand to God, I swear this stuff has to be caulk of some kind.

Is there a legit style of glue used in luthiery that behaves just like white silicone caulk?